A Time to Remember
by BuildYourFences
Summary: Peeta's point of view of the moment Katniss shoots President Coin. What does he think? Can things go ever go back to the way they were? Spoilers all around. Oneshot


Author's Note:

**Thanks to the fabulous people who reviewed (thank you all, by the way. You guys have made my week) I realized that I forgot to proofread, which is kind of a disaster, because I had some pretty colossal mistakes. No promises that I got everything, but this should be better. Yeah, so nothing new except a few commas and stuff**

So, this would be my first story, um, ever. Please, please please and constructive criticism you've got would be fabulous. If it's boring, plotless, doesn't stay true to the book, just hit me with it. Please. Extremely please.

Disclaimer: Definitely not mine.

* * *

I watch as the Katniss, the girl I cannot seem to understand no matter how hard I try, appears as if by magic in the small stretch of the land that is to be her slaughter house. As always, her presence triggers a war between my emotions. At once, I feel a burning hatred and a fierce joy welling up inside of me, and I try to quash them, try to replace them with a practiced indifference. I have been failing to do this for weeks now, and it drives me mad.

Now, Katniss is picking up her bow, running experienced hands over the polished wood. She smiles slightly, and I know the people around me are all wondering what this girl, this hero of theirs, is thinking. Their thoughts will range from revenge to relief and back again, but I know they will all be wrong. She's just pleased to have that bow in her hands. I study her, noting the tension and the confliction in her eyes. Confliction? What can she possibly be conflicted about? Her job is pretty straight forward—shoot the man sitting roughly 3 yards in front of her. I decide I must have imagined it.

And then her arrow pierces President Coin's eye, exactly where we used to find punctures holes in the squirrels she brought my father. President Coin tumbles forward, her mouth still set in a grim line. Katniss's arrows fly too swiftly to allow for any sort of surprise.

The crowd of rebels and I fall silent in an instant, and we turn to gape at her as one. Some are hostile, some shocked, some only perplexed._ Did she miss? _Some will wonder. The past and present Presidents were not standing so far apart. However, I know better. This hunter never misses; I examine her closely and suddenly, it's as if I'm back in the arena for my first ever Hunger Games. Just a desperate boy trying to kill himself to save the girl he loves. I watch, again, the gears turning in her head, the millions of plans and escapes flickering in and out of her eyes. Now the final realization. Death it will be. And as I see her eyes shift to the pocket on her left arm, it suddenly clicks.

I love her.

I remember everything.

The voice so lovely it made the mockingjays fall silent. The strength. The compassion she's never seen. The courage. The selflessness so deeply ingrained she has no idea it exists. The independence, the determination, the power of will. Everything that made this girl mine is back.

And suddenly I'm bounding through the crowd, the only figure moving in a sea of petrifciation. Just one thought in my head. The one that's been there ever since she raised her hand and spoke up so many months ago, the one that not even President Snow's hi-jacking could blot out forever.

Katniss Everdeen. Must. Not. Die.

I fly to her side, racing to the only other person in this crowd who matters. My hand reaches the pocket at the same time she does. I feel a vicious stab of triumph as her teeth sink into my arm.

_You may be cleverer than I am, Katniss. But I love you, so I'll always, always win. _

Now her eyes are meeting mine, and the confusion, desperation, and panic I see there break my newly-discovered heart.

"Let me go!" she shrieks in my face, sounding absolutely feral. Her arms are jerking wildly, trying to be free of me, but even her crazed fit of adrenaline cannot erase weeks of wasting away. I am still too strong for her.

"I can't," I manage to gasp out as the District 13 soldiers descend on us. I feel the fabric of that horrible pocket tear beneath my fingertips and watch, relieved, as the nightlock that keeps trying to take my Katniss from me is trampled beneath heavy boots. I look back at her, and the fury and betrayal her eyes express are enough to make me want to shake her. Tell her I'm back. Tell her I'll never leave her again. Tell her she sure as _hell _better not leave me.

But I can't hold her attention for long. Now she is writhing, flailing, and clawing like a cornered beast. Shrieking something I can't make out. But when I do, it nearly sends me over the edge, back into the shadow land of tracker jacker poison, false illusions, and, above all, pain. Gale.

Even now I am not enough for her. After all he's done—and I heard where the bomb that killed Prim came from—she still wants him. I feel myself starting to tremble, more and more violently as the seconds pass, and I reach for a weapon that I know they'd never let me have. An angry red haze is starting to cloud out Peeta, the baker, the painter, and the lover, leaving only one thought, clear and shiny as can be.

Katniss Everdeen. Must. Die.

Then a scream percolates, deflating my outraged swell of anger. Katniss is still yelling her head off. But now I know why, because along with Gale there are two new words. Shoot me.

Everything comes rushing back, bringing with it a crippling shame. My Katniss is not cruel. She is a survivor. Sometimes the two are easily confused, but I have always known better, until recently. I hate myself for forgetting this difference between killing because you have no other choice and killing because you enjoy it. Between fighting a war for you people and fighting for power. Between firing a quick, painless shot through the eye and firing long, merciless blow to the side.

Now I am whirling around in circles, a desperate twister of Peeta, searching for a tall, grey-eyed, black-haired man. Ready to take this man down if he shows any sign of answering her pleas. Prepared to give myself for the furthering of one, overriding goal.

Katniss Everdeen. Must. Not. Die.

When I finally spot him, he is standing stricken, his bow in a heap at his feet. Our eyes meet and I know we have an understanding, me and this man who was my rival. I relax. For now, the danger has ebbed and I am confident it will not return. I will see her again, hold her again, love her again. Katniss Everdeen will walk free. Because it's clear as day that just like Gale and I, the people of Panem adore this girl who was on fire.

She really has no idea the effect she has on people.


End file.
